


Melody of Love

by CanterburyBells



Category: Dragon Quest Builders (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I don't think it's physically possible for me to write these two without tenderness honestly, I'm very sorry for the lame summary, M/M, Nightmares, PLEASE HEED THE TAGS!, Tenderness, Vomiting, endgame spoilers, it's hard to write them for short fics!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanterburyBells/pseuds/CanterburyBells
Summary: Malroth wakes up from a nightmare of terrifying proportions, and Zach is there for him in the only way that he can be.
Relationships: Builder/Malroth (Dragon Quest Builders 2), Male Builder/Malroth (Dragon Quest Builders 2)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 46





	Melody of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again everyone! I finally have a short fic to share!! I'm so damn proud of myself for finally keeping something under 5k because this was so much more manageable than the last one I wrote in a day. HEADS UP: If you haven't read the tags, do so now. There is what I consider to be a rather detailed depiction of gore pretty early on as well as vomiting, so if either of those is a no no for you, please do not read. There are also spoilers for the story after MB, so be aware of that as well. But for the most part, this is meant to be along the lines of emotional hurt/comfort, (mostly comfort), so I get through most of the tough stuff first. Anyway, see you guys at the end, or possibly in my next fic instead:D

“Malroth, please!” Zach begs, cradling his wounded arm on the floor before him.

The room around Malroth swims with a thick, heady energy that wraps around his formidable new form. His muscles twitch and simmer pleasantly with heat and untapped strength. His claws gleam like savage blades as he reaches for the insignificant creature shaking by his feet and wraps a hand around him like a vice.

Zach’s breath is strained as he pleads once more, “This isn’t you, Malroth. Fight him. I promised you I would knock some sense back into you! Fight him, please!” He smacks his fists on Malroth’s impenetrable hide, voice nothing more than the inane buzzing of a particularly pesky fly.

“I told you before, Zach.” His voice comes out guttural and broken like a lightning strike overlaying the sounds of a rockslide. “I’ll remember our time together as friends, but the world can’t have creation and destruction together. This is how it was always meant to be—destruction consuming creation.”

Zach wriggles helplessly in his hand, not even filling his palm. Barely a morsel. He cries out when his leg catches on the tip of a talon. “Malroth, please, _please_ , I just want to go back home. We can see Lulu and have a tea party together again. You don’t have to eat her cake this time, I can—”

“I’ll try to make this quick since you helped me find my true self. Goodbye, Zach.”

Malroth’s chest rumbles delightedly at the terrified scream that Zach chokes out before he’s trapped behind his teeth.

Blood rushes hot and salty over his tongue. Slivers of splintered bone poke his gums and crunch pleasantly under the powerful force of his jaw. The skull doesn't give as easily as the rest, but soon it is little more than gristle on the back of his tongue, and he is rewarded with the slick slide of brain matter down his throat. He feels the squelching pop of something soft—a spleen or liver maybe. A heart is too small and frail to deserve notice.

He has the faintest memory of eating a bowl of pasta with meaty red sauce before it vanishes like a wisp of smoke as he swallows down what was little more than a drop in the bucket to his bottomless hunger for destruction. Malroth licks the drool dripping from his gums, collecting the scant remaining pieces of flesh clinging between his fangs. Something catches on the tip of his forked tongue and refuses to dislodge. He looks down at it in irritation, intent on tossing it aside to lie and wait to be turned to ash with the rest of this wretched palace.

Hanging there lifelessly, he sees a tiny yellow glove splattered in bright red blood.

He _howls._

\------------------

Malroth throws himself from bed as he jerks awake, gagging on the taste of copper on his tongue. His feet slip on the carpet in his haste, and his knee bangs into the floor as he lunges for the waste bin by Zach’s desk. He barely makes it in time to avoid spilling the entire contents of his stomach all over the floor. He wretches violently as he recalls the vivid details of his dream—the brittle splintering bones, the delicious slide of pulpy, bloody matter going down his gullet, the horrified cries of his best friend—

His blood is rushing so loudly in his ears as he hurls again that he can’t hear Zach flailing awake in their bed and rushing to his side in a panic.

When he feels a soft touch on his bare shoulder, he flinches violently and curls away from it and further into the bin as he chokes wetly. He hears Zach’s low voice struck through with concern and uncertainty ask, “Malroth, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Goddess, I wonder if something we ate last night was off. Here, let me hold your hair back.”

He reaches out to gather Malroth’s loose hair hanging wildly over his shoulders and partially in the bin, and Malroth shies away once more. His stomach seizes again, and suddenly he can’t breathe past the acid crawling back up his throat. His mouth is bitter when he finally finds the air to beg Zach desperately, voice raw and torn, “Get away, get _away_ , don't come near me." His voice breaks halfway through his plea, and he feels hot tears on his face as he heaves again.

That dream—that absolute _nightmare_ —had tossed him right back to the darkest time in his life and thrown his fears in his face like a mouthful of spat blood. His muscles shake with phantom strength, the raw, unmatched power to obliterate everything he loves. And his heart shivers with the memory of wanting to.

He gasps pitifully, and his stomach quivers dangerously again, but this time nothing else forces its way back up. He’s instead left with a sinking sense of guilt over pushing Zach away. His mind dredges up the fleeting image of Zach pounding his small fists against his massive scaled hand, trying to help him then, even in a dream, just as he’s doing now in the flesh.

And Malroth just turned him away again.

But if he’s away from Malroth, then he’s safe.

Malroth has so much power to destroy Zach, and he despises it. It would be far too easy to ruin him, to break his body or shatter his heart again. One wrong move and he could do irreparable damage to the best thing in his life.

And it terrifies him.

He feels something cold drape over his shoulder and startles out of his dark thoughts.

Zach looks at him with sad blue eyes from where he has quickly backed off to sit on the floor by the bed and says in a gentle voice, “I brought you a wet rag. I won’t touch you, and I can stay over here, but please, Malroth. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”

Malroth feels hot with shame. The rag is a cool relief on his sweaty skin, an indirect point of contact with Zach, who looks so small and lost and worried with his arms wrapped around his knees. There’s not an ounce of judgement in his eyes—there never has been, not even when he had beaten Malroth’s god form to hell and back while he had unforgivable words spat at him.

But Malroth can’t make himself give voice to the horrific things he saw in his nightmare. Everything he touches always breaks, and he wonders if he allows his fears to slip from his head if they will taint the light of the world that Zach and his friends have built from the ground up.

He shakes his head minutely, unable to refuse Zach to his face but incapable of giving him what he wants. He grabs the wet cloth on his shoulder as he sits back from the bin, and he wipes his face clean. He sighs in relief as the breeze outside their cracked window brushes against his damp skin.

He doesn’t hear a telltale sigh of disappointment from Zach’s direction, but he hears him shuffle as he stands, and Malroth’s chest tightens at the thought of being left alone in their dark room. He must make a small sound because Zach reassures him as he walks over to his nightstand, “I’m not leaving, I promise. Just grabbing something.”

He comes back and steps a bit closer this time as he watches Malroth’s face for permission. Malroth pushes the bin away into the corner and turns to face Zach as he sits and crosses his bare legs. Sitting together in their underclothes in their dark room, Zach holds out the echo flute.

It’s been a while since Malroth has laid eyes on it. Not so far back as Khrumbul-Dun, but Zach lacks the patience for learning and playing instruments, so he rarely uses it anymore. Its glossy surface shines in the scant moonlight from the window as Zach cradles it in his pale hands.

He doesn’t waste his breath with words. He sets the flute against his lips and starts a shaky tune that he learned from Haydin long ago. Malroth tries to recall its name as he watches Zach’s deft fingers dance a slow ballad across the flute. His eyes are closed, likely to concentrate, but the moon on his skin casts his face in a soft glow. As Malroth admires the delicate shadows from Zach’s eyelashes, he remembers the name of the song.

The Melody of Love.

It’s a gentle piece that brings to mind rolling green hills and open blue skies and always reminds Malroth of the feeling in his heart when he sees Zach laughing with sunlight setting his golden hair aglow.

A sudden wisp of light by Zach’s face makes him squint and search for a stray summer firefly that snuck its way into their room. More lights blink to life the longer that Zach plays his melody, and Malroth realizes that the lights are coming from the flute itself. From what he remembers of the mysterious instrument, it helps the player seek out what their heart desires.

Each glowing note breathed to life floats in the air between them, fluctuating in their brightness each time a new note follows, and eventually the entire bedroom is alight with a veritable galaxy of music. Malroth gazes at Zach breathlessly and swallows thickly. The notes hover around the two of them as they sit close together in the comfort of each other’s presence.

Malroth wonders what it means that the notes don’t stray from their sides as the song winds down.

Zach blinks his eyes open as the light motes begin to fade, and he gives Malroth a soft, sweet smile before they’re left once again with only the watery moonlight from the window.

“We don’t have to talk tonight. I can play another song if you want. I know you always feel better after you play, but I want to do something for you. I’m sorry I can’t do more.” He looks down at his flute with a somber expression, and Malroth wishes to reclaim the easy calm that he felt in his chest as Zach played.

But he can’t ask Zach to play again when he clearly feels so upset. Malroth could fix this. It doesn’t have to be the one wrong move it would take to break Zach’s heart again. But what will he think if he hears the disturbing things that haunt Malroth’s dreams?

He hopes that Zach will forgive him.

“I had a nightmare,” he croaks. His throat is scratched to all hell and his mouth is disgusting and dry as he stumbles through an explanation. “I was there again. In...” He can’t even remember the name. He only knows it as a barbaric purgatory—an imprisonment of endless darkness and agony.

“In Malhalla,” Zach says grimly.

“Yeah. I was—I was him again. We were...the true Master of Destruction. Together. And,” he squeezes the lukewarm rag in his hands, “you were there. You came after me.”

“I’m guessing if you woke up like _that_ , I failed pretty spectacularly.”

“ _No_ ,” Malroth denies harshly, “You’ve never failed me. You never could, no matter what. I...I ate you, Zach.”

Zach’s eyes widen in shock, and his mouth hangs open like he’s trying to find a way to respond to that.

Malroth doesn’t wait. “I remember saying that I would back then when you were just keeping your promise to me. I—we—that _thing_ , we were so hungry. Where our stomach should have been there was just this...endless void. If you hadn’t saved me, we would have consumed everything. It was the kind of hunger that could never be sated. We would have torn ourselves apart in the very end. But in my dr—my nightmare, you were the first thing I devoured. I still taste—”

His words choke off as his throat squeezes at the reminder. He feels his hands shaking, and he grips his knees tight enough to make his knuckles go white.

A warm hand settles over his own, and suddenly Malroth can breathe again. “You’re not there anymore, Malroth. We’re on our island together. Me, you, and Lulu and Rosie and Babs and everyone. You never hurt anyone.” Zach slips his other hand under Malroth’s to clasp it between both of his. “That monster used you. He made you see horrible things—made you say and do terrible things. But that’s why you asked me to slap some sense into you, remember? That night on the beach?”

Malroth’s nose fills with the scent of salty ocean air as the memory floats through his mind. His words sound far away, almost covered over by the crash of the waves. “Zach? If I ever...don’t seem like myself...would you do me a favor? Could you hit me— _hard_ —like hard enough to knock some sense into me?”

And Zach had never promised to harm him, but he had sounded as if he were promising a life oath when he assured Malroth that he would come after him no matter where life took him. Malroth had seen the loyalty burning in his eyes like blue flames as he promised to always be there for him, and he knew then without a doubt that Zach would go to the ends of the earth for him and beyond with no question.

“I remember,” he whispers.

“That’s how I know that you are _nothing_ like that monster. You asked for help when you felt yourself slipping, and you trusted me to catch you. You would never hurt your friends or anyone else because you never wanted to do any of those things they made you do.” Zach releases his hold on Malroth’s hand and instead wraps his arms around him and pulls him close. “I know you’re still scared and don’t always trust yourself. And I’m not going to push you to. But I want you to know that I will always be here to catch you, and I trust you to catch me too.”

Malroth squeezes his eyes shut and lets himself melt in Zach’s arms. He hugs him back and breathes out shakily against his skin and takes a brief moment to wrap his head around the gratefulness and relief blooming like a field of flowers inside of him. How could he have ever thought for a second that Zach would be better off away from him? Malroth knows that he would burn the world to the ground to stay by Zach’s side, just as Zach would do for him.

They’re safest when they’re together.

They hold each other for several stretching minutes and just breathe in the comfortable silence. He rests his forehead against Zach’s shoulder while Zach rubs the wet rag over the ends of his hair to clean away any lingering mess from where it hung in the waste bin. Malroth trails the flat of his hand up and down Zach’s back in a soothing repetition and presses a warm kiss into his collarbone.

Zach pets his hair for a few more moments and lays a kiss of his own against the thick strands, but eventually he mumbles, “You’ll probably want some water before we go back to bed. It’s still late. We don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to, but you should still rest.” He pulls back and pushes a few loose wisps of hair out of Malroth’s face as he cradles his cheek in one hand. “How about you go lie back down while I get you a cup from the well.”

Something in Malroth balks again at the idea of being alone tonight—specifically at letting Zach out of his sight. He gives himself away when he grips Zach’s wrist hastily. Zach looks down at the contact and furrows his eyebrows.

“Okay, do you want to come down with me, then? We can light a candle and set up on the couch?”

Malroth is about to agree—anything to keep Zach close—until he realizes how weak he feels. Compared to the staggering power he felt flowing through him in his nightmare, he feels like a kitten now. His muscles still shiver sporadically after all of the hurling he did, and his body is running purely on exhausted fumes. His knee throbs where it smacked into the floor when he fell earlier, and he winces when he imagines trying to make it down the stairs in one piece.

He isn’t sure what to say. He doesn’t like either option. It must be plain on his face because Zach smiles at him with a mischievous curl to the edges of his mouth and asks sweetly, “Want me to carry you down?”

Malroth’s thoughts screech to a chaotic halt, and he stares at Zach blankly. “There’s no way you can pick me up. You’re too scrawny.”

Zach laughs. “Maybe I used to be. I like to think I’ve put on some muscle since we first met.”

Malroth feels his face warm up as he glances at Zach’s chest and arms. He hasn’t really noticed before, but Zach truly has come a long way from his little noodle arms, what with swinging around a massive mallet from sun up to sundown every day. He’s never thought about Zach’s figure much past how vulnerable he is in fights with his skinny frame. And it never mattered during...other situations because he didn’t care what he got to see or touch as long as it was part of Zach. But now that Zach has pointed it out and Malroth drags his eyes down the shape of him, he thinks that Zach could probably pick him up with little effort.

And that does funny things to his stomach.

“Alright tough guy. Put your muscles where your mouth is then.” He tries to lean back casually and shoot a confident smirk at Zach, but his body still feels wrung out and sore like an overworked ball of bread dough, and he likely looks pitiful more than anything else right now. But Zach smiles at him anyway and gets to his knees to slip his hands under Malroth’s legs and behind his back. When Malroth feels his feet leave the ground, his stomach drops for an uncomfortable second and he clings onto Zach in surprise.

Pressed to his chest like this, Malroth can feel Zach’s laughter rumble against his skin. He shivers and grips tighter. “Not so cocky now, are we?” Zach jokes. Malroth doesn’t grace him with a response. Zach is definitely going to need his breath for the stairs.

But it speaks plainly to the sheer amount of effort and time that Zach has poured into his very physical work that he makes carrying someone as bulky as Malroth seem nearly effortless until they’re almost halfway down the stairs. Zach grunts when his foot almost slips in the dark, and he huffs out, “Goddess, you’re so fucking heavy. You’re just—ugh—pure muscle.” Malroth can feel Zach’s arms tighten around him as they pass the landing and he struggles to not drop them both in a painful heap at the bottom of the staircase.

Just to be a bit of an ass, Malroth brushes his fingers distractingly over the hollow of Zach’s throat as he says, “You’ve never complained about that before.”

In revenge, Zach pretends to drop him for a split second before ‘catching’ him again, and Malroth’s hold becomes an unbreakable vice that broadcasts _If I fall, I’m dragging your ass down with me_. Zach presses a sloppy kiss on his temple in the dark and argues, “Yeah, well, normally I'm not the one doing all of the heavy lifting." He laughs, and his chest rumbles pleasantly, and his arms shake slightly where they rest warm against Malroth’s bare skin.

They finally make it to the main room, and Zach drops him ungracefully on the couch before stumbling back through the kitchen to find a candle. He returns with a gentle flickering flame and sets it on the table by the couch to keep Malroth company while he fetches some water.

Malroth tracks him through the window as he heads out the door and around the corner of the house to the water pump. The light from the lanterns outside glows attractively against Zach’s skin as he leans down to collect water in a glass. Some deep part of Malroth purrs like a great contented beast at the thought that no one else gets to see Zach this way: carrying him down stairs like a blushing bride with (moderate to difficult) ease, walking comfortably around their home and yard barely dressed, playing music that lights up their shared space like a jar of fireflies.

Everything about Zach is magical, and Malroth was ridiculous to think that he could ever bear to be apart from him.

Zach comes back in through the door loudly cursing as he wipes a hand down his front. “I spilled some of your water because I tripped on the stairs. But there’s still,” he holds the glass up in front of his face to check the water level, “about half a glass.”

Maybe magical was too strong of a word for his idiot builder.

Good thing for Zach that Malroth will love him no matter how stupid or magical he is or isn’t.

He grabs Zach by the hips and pulls him close enough to wipe off his front with the blanket from the back of the couch that Ordelia had knitted for them. Zach smiles and sits on the couch next to Malroth handing him his glass. “I guess we can probably just stay down here for the rest of the night. There’s no way I could make it back up carrying you.”

Malroth takes a few refreshing gulps of his fresh water instead of admitting to Zach that he could probably make it up now with a little effort. He could do anything for Zach. But he’d rather stay with him here on the couch by the reassuring warmth and light from the candle. He sets his glass down on the table and turns to manhandle Zach into the perfect position for Malroth to sprawl out on top of him.

Zach allows himself to be bullied, and as soon as Malroth seems content with his position, Zach pulls him down to rest against him. Malroth’s thick hair drapes over them both like the blanket of the night sky, and Zach rubs his fingers against Malroth’s scalp as they wind down.

Malroth rests his cheek against Zach’s chest and listens to his strong heartbeat as his eyes grow heavy. Lying here with Zach—breathing against him and being held gently by hands that could decimate a mountain with a hammer half his size—Malroth knows that no more nightmares wait for him tonight.

He falls asleep fearlessly, knowing in his heart that the next time he wakes it will be to a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at writing anything grisly, so I hope you felt all of the chilling horror that Malroth was experiencing!! Also some of you may have noticed (if you have read my other stuff) that Zach is no longer a little twig by this point in his story. He is officially a twunk. One of my chat friends convinced me by drawing him with muscled arms in a bunny suit, and I'm sorry, but there’s no going back after that.  
> If anyone would like to see Zach as a total twunk, check out Cherrytraveller's gorgeous, stunning art of Zach and Toola here: https://cherrytraveller.tumblr.com/post/624433239306780672/battle-bunnies-who-will-beat-you-to-death-and-look
> 
> I’d also like to dedicate this fic to every single one of my asshole friends who made jokes about vore when we were talking about the part right before the first Malroth fight where he says he’s going to eat you. That literally fucking inspired me to write this, and I hate them all for it. (NO this is not meant to be vore even a little bit, if I EVEN have to say that) 
> 
> ALSO, here is the song that Zach plays for Malroth on the flute!: https://youtu.be/OdGTM7I-9kY  
> This is one of my top favorite dragon quest songs of all time, so this was a great chance for me to work it into one of my fics.
> 
> Alrighty, let me know what you guys think! I love to hear y'all's favorite lines if you have them or just drop a quick comment to lmk your opinion on my gory nightmare scene! Oooooo! See you next time:D


End file.
